Recent Update

I haven’t updated this site for a while because of a bizarre WordPress error, but all seems well now.

I’ve been busy the past six months! I’ve posted a lot of new things at SimpleRanger.net, tons of new images at Apres Garde, and started posting a lot over at mlkshk. I’ve started one mlkshk for Breaking Bad (new favorite show) and one for modern homes. I think I only have one new post up at GoogleSightseeing, but I have a couple more in the works.

I was quoted in this CultureMap series about the DFW archives at the Ransom Center in Austin (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5).

And just a couple of weeks ago, we celebrated Arlo’s first birthday!

Crappy iPhone pics of the DFW stuff currently on display in the Ransom Center lobby

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2010/01/-leave-me-alone.html

Rich’s conclusion (which I agree with) is that the public/private elements of reading need not be mutually exclusive, at least until the dawn of a DeLilloan nightmare, when mass-reading groups assemble in a single room like a bunch of Moonies tying the knot. Rich introduces Matthew Bucher, who runs an online discussion group for David Foster Wallace Fans called “Wallace-L.”While Bucher is a clear example of the modern reader—interested in making connections and building communities—he also values the solitude that reading provides: “I still read the book at home at night by myself with one lamp.”

Of the DFW archive, I wanted to see what the Ransom Center had chosen to display in the lobby the day after the acquisition announcement.

There are four items on display:

1. the cover page of the first two sections of Infinite Jest sent to Bonnie Nadell. The page is covered in notes.

2. a notebook of typescript pages of Infinite Jest

3. the heavily annotated galley of the Borges biography DFW reviewed for the NY Times in 2004.

4. the poem about Vikings Wallace wrote at the age of six or seven. It is believed to be the first time he signed anything “David Foster Wallace” (top of page).

There are also some great letters to and from Vera Nabokov regarding Vladimir Nabokov possibly writing the screenplay for The Day of The Locust or Invisible Man.